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Space

Weird Asteroid Itokawa Has a Dual Personality 61

Posted by Unknown Lamer from the spaceship-disguised-as-asteroid dept.
astroengine writes "We care about how asteroids are made, in large part because if one were aiming to smash into us, we'd like to know what we can do about it. The structure of asteroids is also a matter of scientific curiosity, as it tells us a bit about the formation and evolution in our solar system. ... 25143 Itokawa is a relatively small near-Earth asteroid that was visited by the Japanese Habayusa spacecraft in 2005. It has also been monitored by Stephen Lowry of the University of Kent and his colleagues over a twelve year span with the 3.58 meter New Technology Telescope in La Silla, Chile. In that time span, Itokawa has made five near approaches to Earth. And what did they find? The asteroid is composed of two lobes of different densities, suggesting that Itokawa is in fact a merged binary." ESO is hosting a preprint of the paper.
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Weird Asteroid Itokawa Has a Dual Personality More

Weird Asteroid Itokawa Has a Dual Personality

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  • Summary named the sattelite wrong... (Score:5, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday February 05, 2014 @02:00PM (#46163989)

    It's the Hayabusa, not Habayusa... Thank you and good bye.

    • That motorcycles are now in space?

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by jasax ( 1728312 )
      From ask.com, a bit of culture...

      "The Japanese name 'Hayabusa' means a peregrine falcon; a bird that often serves as a metaphor for speed due to its vertical hunting dive. The name was made popular by Japanese professional wrestler Hayabusa, also known as The Masked Falcon."

      A bit off-topic, there's also a family of very good offensive table tennis blades from the Xiom brand (http://www.xiomtt.com/) with that name :-) I'm a player and aficionado of TT, so forgive me this hiatus.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by cusco ( 717999 )

        How does a table tennis blade get offensive? Does it have a brace to hold your middle finger erect during play, or are offensive images printed on the face? Inquiring minds want to know . . .

        • Re: (Score:1)

          by jasax ( 1728312 )
          Its the type of wood (or of several types of carbon, glass fiber, titanium, etc...) layers used in its assembly that dictate the offensiveness of the blade (in a defensive-offensive scale). The gluing, the thickness and the relative placement of the layers also are important in defining the type of the blade, and in conjunction with the type of the rubbers they set the type of the complete TT racket. There are several thousands of commercial blades and rubbers, so the choice is enormous ;-)

          Usually its th

  • NO! (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday February 05, 2014 @02:06PM (#46164061)

    If you move me to the beta slashdot abortion i'll add this place to the block list and never visit again.

    Too many other news sites regurgitate the exact same storys i see here. And all of them don't look as shitty as the beta slashdot.

    Stop being stupid.

    • Re:NO! (Score:4, Insightful)

      by Iskender ( 1040286 ) on Wednesday February 05, 2014 @02:15PM (#46164153)

      It could look like anything for all I care, if it *worked*.

      But the beta is a huge discussion functionality downgrade. Might as well read comments on Ars Technica to get that masochist interface kick...

    • re: NO (Score:4, Informative)

      by Antipater ( 2053064 ) on Wednesday February 05, 2014 @02:21PM (#46164221)
      I had never seen the Beta site, so I was curious what all the fuss was about; it couldn't be that bad! I clicked the beta link, and now I can't get OUT! There's no un-beta link, and I'm auto-redirected back to beta every time. What the actual fuck.

      • Re: NO (Score:4, Insightful)

        by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday February 05, 2014 @02:26PM (#46164271)

        Terrible, isn't it? Occasionally I get directed to it and keep reloading/pressing the back button until I don't.

        The Slashdot Beta is fucking terrible, and has gone the route of Way Too Much Whitespace and looks like shit.

        Whatever drunken idiots think it's a good website should be flayed, castrated, and then shot.

        • Terrible, isn't it? Occasionally I get directed to it and keep reloading/pressing the back button until I don't.

          The Slashdot Beta is fucking terrible, and has gone the route of Way Too Much Whitespace and looks like shit.

          Whatever drunken idiots think it's a good website should be flayed, castrated, and then shot.

          You're being far too kind. The auteur of the beta Slashdot design should be torn into itty-bitty pieces and buried alive. Count me in as another long-time slashdot reader who will be adding the site to Leechblock as soon as I can no longer access class Slashdot. And given the trend topics that have been making it to the top of the pile lately (with this one as a nice exception) I'm kind of wondering why I'm waiting...

      • Re: NO (Score:4, Insightful)

        by smooth wombat ( 796938 ) on Wednesday February 05, 2014 @02:38PM (#46164383) Journal

        It's not just this site which decided that usefulness should be jammed down the sewer in favor of shiny, take a look at NBC's redesigned site. It looks and acts like Windows 8!

        Once again, Rule #3 that should never be broken:

        Never let a web designer design your web site.

      • Maybe (Score:3, Informative)

        by P1h3r1e3d13 ( 1158845 )
        There's a “Slashdot Classic” link in the footer.
        For reference, it goes to http://slashdot.org/?nobeta=1 [slashdot.org]

        • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

          by MightyMartian ( 840721 )

          But from what I can tell of the little message that came up, at some point they intend to shut down the classic site. That's why I sent them an email telling them I'm gone once they do that.

        • Oh, thank god, I'm out. And thank you for the link - it most definitely was not there in the footer on my screen. Then again, I had no sidebar on it either (the tutorial/tips that popped up were pointing at a nonexistent sidebar), so it was probably just broken more than normal.

      • add ?nobeta=1 after slashdot.org/ in the url
        I even have it bookmarked because I get selected to test the beta site quite often.
        If it ever does go live, I'm sure there will be a greasemonkey script to undo the madness, it is hated that much

      • There's no un-beta link

        I must be imagining the big 'Slashdot Classic' link at the bottom of every page then.

        • It wasn't there for me. As I said in other posts, I apparently got an even worse version than usual - there was no sidebar or footer, so no Slashdot Classic link. All I could see was the header and the stories.
    • It was designed by someone with a massive whitespace fetish who has clearly never actually used the site.

      I will leave the site in a heartbeat if this is forced on people, it's just plain unusable.
    • Comment removed based on user account deletion

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by antdude ( 79039 )

      Ditto. Keep classic option please.

  • For everyone complaining about the beta format. They put a link right up on top of the pages now. Don't just post rants here (personally I doubt anyone in charge reads the comments here) send them emails telling them how much of an abomination it is.
    feedback@slashdot.org?subject=beta_feedback

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by RDW ( 41497 )

      No, don't JUST post rants here. But post them here as well. Then perhaps somebody with a financial interest in this site who would otherwise see only pre-filtered comments from whoever is in charge of this Windows-8 style fiasco ("we've had some very positive feedback from seven of the target demographics listed in Happy Table 5") will happen to come across what most people on here actually think. Which is that Beta sucks.

    • And I was even nice. After I pointed out why the best site is "teh suck" I offered helpful suggestions about the commenting layout, 'cause that's a whole lotta whitespace they've got in there.

    • For everyone complaining about the beta format. They put a link right up on top of the pages now. Don't just post rants here (personally I doubt anyone in charge reads the comments here) send them emails telling them how much of an abomination it is.

      No one is willing to do that any more because it is quite clear that they do not read the emails. By all appearances, by sending an email you are sending your comments to /dev/null. As a side affect, no one else (read: the general Slashdot user base) will know that you also do not approve of the beta abomination. Emails to a dead mailbox, uncounted or analyzed for content, can easily be dismissed as a vocal minority.

      In contrast, posting comments in the stories is a very public statement that everyone sees,

  • Can inanimate objects have a personality? (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Virtucon ( 127420 ) on Wednesday February 05, 2014 @03:21PM (#46164891)

    I think the correct definition would be dual properties comprised of different materials and densities. Other than that you better send like Risperdal or Prozac to the asteroid immediately and sign it up for a guest shot on Dr. Phil.

  • I find it a bit strange that the image is of 4 Vesta [wikipedia.org], a V-type [wikipedia.org] asteroid. 25143 Itokawa [wikipedia.org] is an S-type [wikipedia.org] asteroid.

  • No, not really. I mean, gosh, who cares.

    Here's an alternate "theory" . The asteroid isn't made up of two merged blobs: it's going all cellular division on us and is in the process of asexual reproduction. This takes a long time, what with rock being somewhat stiffer than amoebas and all.

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